Veteran gamer seeks to hold onto accounts

A Shanghai-based online game operator sought Monday to overturn a lower court's ruling ordering it to restore the accounts of a player it accused of violating the game's rules by selling in-game assets for real-world money.

Shanghai Youtong Science and Technology Co Ltd, which runs the popular game EVE Online in China, argued in Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court that the player, Chen Hao, 27, broke its terms of service agreement when he sold his in-game currency, ships and equipment on taobao.com.

The company froze Chen's accounts on August 9 after it discovered the sale. Chen then sued the company in Xuhui District People's Court to unfreeze his accounts with his characters intact. In his lawsuit, Chen, who put six years into the game, accused the company of damaging his reputation.

Although Chen won his lawsuit, the company did not immediately reinstate his accounts.

According to the company, Chen's characters had money and equipment worth nearly 1 trillion ISK, the game's currency. One can buy 100 million ISK online for between 5 ($0.81) and 6 yuan - making the potential real world value of his characters anywhere from 50,000 yuan to 60,000 yuan. Still, the company acknowledged that it didn't know how much Chen made from the sales.

At Monday's hearing, the game company's lawyer argued that Chen sold the in-game currency and equipment through several of characters, which he deleted soon after the transactions were complete. 

"This is abnormal in the sense that these characters only existed to receive money and property," a company representative said in court. "These extraordinary activities made us suspicious."

In order to show that the characters were created by the same player, the company produced records from its database that showed the three characters were connected to the same IP address and had similar registration information.

Chen acknowledged that he had created six characters under two accounts; however, he denied that he used the characters to sell in-game currency.

"Having the same IP addresses doesn't prove that these IP addresses are linked to my computer because IP addresses are randomly assigned to Internet users by the Internet service providers," Chen said in the court.

The court did not make a ruling after the hearing.

Both parties expressed that they were willing to settle the dispute out of court.

Chen told the Global Times that he was willing to make a deal if the company agreed to preserve his characters' equipment, because some of it belonged to other players. He added that he was willing to give up the in-game currency he had earned.